Is The FCC Anti-First-Amendment Campaign Out Of The IRS Criminal Manual?

The IRS targeting scandal is of course multi-faceted, but one of its key elements was the use of comprehensive IRS questionnaires to determine everything from tea-party donor and member lists to the actions and activities of family members and even identifying “persons or entities with which you maintain a close relationship.” In other words, the Obama administration IRS was abusing its regulatory authority to essentially discern the inner workings of an entire political and cultural movement.

Last week, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai disclosed the existence of the FCC’s new “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” a study that would send FCC researchers (monitors?) into newsrooms across the nation to determine, among other things, whether news organizations are meeting citizens “actual” as opposed to “perceived” information needs. As designed, the study empowers researchers to not only ask a series of questions of news staff, it also provides (in pages 10 and 11) advice for gaining access to employees even when broadcasters and their Human Resources refuse to provide confidential employee information. The Obama administration FCC is abusing its regulatory authority by attempting to discern the inner workings of American newsrooms.

Yep, the suggested questions for the newsroom “research project” of the FCC betray that there was a desire to “re-educate” newsrooms in a way that would be more favorable to the White House.

If you say, “Hey, they’re only questions,” just look at the way DC heavy-handedly deals with those who don’t agree with them, and then tell me there’s not unspoken pressure being put on through this exercise.

This is the stuff of tyrannical regimes, and it needs to be permanently stopped, right here, right now. Yes, there are issues to be dealt with in the corporate ownership (NBC, under General Electric, is the most lost of lost causes), but you have to start pushing back somewhere.